Corim's Thoughts

I am so screwed.

And I hurt, a lot.

Animosus healed me a little, but I don't think it was enough.

We were waiting in The Winged Cat, I don't know what for, when somebody spotted some orcs marching down the middle of town. Kelestri said, "Throw a stone at them!" So I did. Blotted the whole area in blackness. Please don't ask me why, but while everyone else was drawing bows I decided to creep into the dark and take out some orcs. Bad idea.

I was halfway to the orcs when I heard the pounding of hooves and the creaking and groaning of tack and armor. I barely had time to react before I was hit in the side with what I can only describe as a tree, a sharp pointy tree. Luckily, I had started to twist aside or I think he would have run me through. It was almost as if he could see me, he must have just been lucky because I KNOW he didn't hear me. He was going too fast for me to even get a good stab at him.

After he passed, I just curled up into a little ball so he couldn't do that again, but he never came back. I think he must have seen the others, thank Mask. I could hear them, and smell them, so I went after the orcs again. I connected one good shot before they all ran off. I think I may have killed him, I didn't get hit in return. They ran, I chased. When I came out of the darkness I stabbed the first orc I saw, and told them in Orcish," Your doom is upon you!" And I might have growled at them, too. I took down another one and the rest ran. Everyone else was around me then, and we chased them down.

I was a little surprised to see a skinny, balding, old guy run past me. He had a fancy staff and caught the last orc alive. Animosus tried to question it, but his idea of persuasion was stepping on it's neck. I was a little worried for Animosus, that he might get carried away with himself, so I stepped in to scare, I mean convince the orc to talk. We found out that we had really hurt the orcs numbers( hooray for us!). I didn't know what we were going to do with it, but Slyl took care of that by quietly slitting its throat. That was cold, necessary perhaps, but cold nonetheless.

The old guy is a monk named Pavel. He is traveling with a paladin called Aveiry. They are delivering a letter to the temple of Ilmater(?) in Kurth. Apparently some monks had a vision of horror. The funny thing is it included a part with twins fighting, one of whom had a CROWN AND SCEPTRE(!!!!!!). Very interesting.

The big sword gang had taken care of the horseman who thought it would be fun to skewer me. I went over to his corpse to give him a few parting shots. Bastard!

Animosus, Kelestri, and Pavel went to get the horses and brought the three we had rescued earlier, they even remembered Shadowin. Animosus took the dark warrior's horse and lance, now Kelestri has his horse.

We then decided to try and liberate the rest of Many Oaks. The freaks of Bane were headquartered in the temple of Chauntea( May the Earthmother have Her vengeance). I was shocked to hear words of caution and reason coming out of Kelestri's mouth, but she had a plan to sneak into the temple. Slyl, Pavel and I crept stealthily around the back. Slyl spotted a newly married couple who had been run down in the fields behind the temple, probably by the dead horseman. We got into the greenhouse and were looking for the secret door that Kelestri had told us about when something tapped me on the shoulder, and grabbed my leg.

They were severed animated hands!!! Creepy, crawly, nasty, yeeach! I could hear Pavel shouting for the rest of our troop to come, but I was too busy trying to get them off of me. Kelestri arrived and broke down a door and called for us to follow her inside. We all managed to get in without bringing the hands along for the ride. We had been looking on the wrong wall, as Kelestri was so kind to point out, so she suggested a different wall. The correct one as it turned out. Not that I was that glad to find it once we got through.

Slyl and I went first because we can see in the dark. There was a great staircase leading down and coming up it was an awful sight. Some creepy Bane freak had three people, probably villagers, chained to a belt around his waist. He was drooling and making weird noises. I think he tried to zap Slyl with a spell, it didn't seem to do anything. I backed off and yelled for reinforcements. Slyl started shouting, "Break the chains."(O.K. he was pointing and jiggling his rapier, I think those crawling hands shook me up more than I thought.) I got one, I don't know who else did, but we freed the prisoners. I tried to flank him, but I couldn't get a good shot at him. He went down fast anyway. We went down into the tunnels beneath the temple and looked for bad guys or survivors.

We found the bad guys first. Slyl heard someone grunting in Orcish and crept down the hall to check it out. Kelestri is giving him some cover with her crossbow. I hope he doesn't get caught or anything.

I'm just going to stay near the back unless an opportunity makes itself evident.

Come on, Slyl, get back. I hope we can handle this. We've got to live up to this Company of Light And Darkness thing....